The Mistletoe Maze
by wfea
Summary: Casper High is throwing a school-wide Christmas party this year, and Danny and Sam both despise the idea of the Mistletoe Maze, the kissing booth with a challenge. DxS fluff. Oneshot.


**A/N: **Yes! You're not imagining things! I've posted twice in the same week! 0.0 Amazing, huh? Well, try not to get used to it, but I'm happy to be able to update some during Christmas break.

Anyway, here is a fluffy DxS piece. And I just looked back at all my stories and realized that I don't have many fluffy stories for these two. Hmm...problem? I think so!

**Merry Christmas to you all! And a Happy New Year!**

**Timeline: **Before PP.

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Danny Phantom or any other such thing I probably shouldn't own.

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><p><strong>The Mistletoe Maze<strong>

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><p>"Merry Christmas!"<p>

"Happy Hanukkah!"

"Happy Kwanza!"

Danny pushed his hands in his pockets and rolled his eyes at Sam's exuberant attitude. Even if Danny had learned his lesson about being a Scrooge at Christmas, he would still never understand how Sam could transform into such a happy person this time of year. He glanced at Tucker, who was shaking his head.

"Man, she needs to find a cap for that excitement before—"

"Happy New Year!" Sam exclaimed to Mikey.

"She's being cheerful...again! Ahh! Run away everyone. Run!"

Sam stood, with a crooked head, watching Mikey dart off, then turned and looked at her two best friends. "What's with him?" The two guys just laughed, and grabbed their friend by each arm and began dragging her into the school gym.

"C'mon, Sam, let's just go enjoy the party," Danny suggested. "I'm sure there are plenty of other people wanting to listen to your holiday cheer in here."

Sam yanked both boys to a stop; they fumbled over their feet for a second, trying to regain their balance, and let go of Sam's arms. She flipped her hair out of her face and leveled an intimidating glare at Danny and Tucker. "I don't like being dragged." Her dark glare softened, and she sent a sugary sweet smile to Mr. Lancer. "Merry Christmas!" She then pranced off, rounding the gym to spread her joy to everyone.

Danny and Tucker took their time perusing through the different Christmas booths that dotted the gym floor. This year, the school has designated the day before exams as a school-wide Christmas party. Every club or volunteer group in school had the chance to set up some sort of Christmas booth; most booths were either giving out candy and chocolate or trying to entice students to play carnival games. The gym itself had been transformed from a floor where sweaty guys played basketball and students were put through unspeakable horrors—all in the name of physical education, of course—into a winter wonderland.

Red, green, and white streamers draped from the beams across the ceiling of the gym, and the floor was so thoroughly covered with white glitter and fake snow that Danny was sure it would never be completely clean again. Most booths were decorated with greenery, red and green streamers and glitter, and fake presents. "Hey dweebs!" Danny and Tucker's heads snapped toward the sound of Dash's voice. He was standing next to an oversize cardboard cut out of a reindeer with a wide open mouth, and there was line of people waiting for a chance to try and throw footballs through the mouth in exchange for a candy-cane. Dash himself was holding a football in his hand and wearing a smirk on his face. "Catch!"

The ball flew through the air and right into Danny's chest. "Oof!" he exclaimed as he fell back into something soft that didn't stop his fall. He opened his eyes to the sight of Paulina standing over him with an angry expression on her face.

"Erh!" she shrieked. "Get out! This is _private!_" She pushed Danny's head back through the curtain he had slid under. Danny hopped up, still holding the football, and glanced back at the huge red curtain that was now blocking his view of whatever Paulina didn't want him to see. He yelped when he suddenly found himself dangling off the floor; glancing around, he saw Dash, who was holding Danny's arm high above his head.

"Planning on returning that, Fen-_toni_?" Dash grabbed the football out of Danny's hand and let him drop to the floor. He pushed him back a couple feet and laughed. "That's better. You wouldn't want me to report you to Lancer for stealing school property from the football team, would you?" Still laughing, Dash rejoined his fellow jocks.

Danny glared after Dash, eyes turning green, and he began to trudge over to give the dimwitted football player a piece of his mind. Tucker held out his arm and stopped him. "Dude, he's so not worth it." Danny sighed, the green glow dropped from his eyes, and he kicked a rather large pile of fake snow, sending it twirling around the floor.

"Nothing about the last two minutes of my life was fair," Danny mumbled, sending another glance toward the large, red curtain.

Tucker laughed. "Man, nothing about your entire _life_is fair." Noticing Danny's fixation on the curtain, Tucker dropped the joking attitude. "What?"

"Come on." Danny grabbed Tucker's jacket and pulled him around the curtain to the front of the elaborate set-up. The front of the attraction was a simple table, decorated with a green tablecloth. The table was sitting in front of the opening to the red curtain, but the inside still could not be seen because of another red curtain set up behind it. The sign on the front of the table read "Mistletoe Maze." Star was standing behind the table, trying to recruit volunteers for the booth.

"Mistletoe Maze! Only a dollar!"

Danny and Tucker stood back and watched as a kid walked up to the booth. "Umm...how does it work?"

"First, you give me a dollar," Star instructed. The hesitant student raised his eyebrow. Star sighed, put a hand on her hip, picked up the wicker basket on the table, and held it toward the guy. The guy slouched and dropped a dollar in the basket. "Thank you! Now, the inside is a maze. There's three places where mistletoe is placed inside. Find one and wait for a girl to walk underneath it. You gotta kiss the first girl that walks underneath it, then get out of the maze. Or find one with a girl already waiting and she has to kiss you. There's other cheerleaders inside to make sure you don't try and cheat yourself into another kiss."

The boy shrugged and stepped through the entrance, but Star turned around to tell him one last thing. "Oh, and if you see Paulina, don't even flatter yourself. She's only interested in the Ghost Boy. She's excluded from the laws of the mistletoe, you know." With those last words of advice, Star finally let the poor boy go and turned to face her next recruit.

Tucker was laughing. "S-so...gonna give Paulina what she wants?"

Danny raised his eyebrow at Tucker. "Seriously dude, you've got issues. And no way! I may not ever get _out_of that maze if Paulina gets a hold of me in there. Besides, she already kicked me out." Danny shrugged and smirked. "She just doesn't know it."

"Well isn't this just the stupidest thing." Danny and Tucker looked over their shoulder at the sound of Sam's voice.

Danny smiled. "What's the matter? Spread cheer to everyone in the gym already?"

Sam nodded absently as she peeked over her friends' shoulders. She raised an eyebrow and smirked. "What the? Seriously? A kissing booth? Thinly veiled, at that."

Star looked at the Goth. "Oh please, like you even _care_." She sneered at Sam. "And like we even need you to."

"What's the money for, Star? Just another way to rip off the less fortunate?"

Star shrieked. "For your information, this money is part of a fundraiser to buy new uniforms." She motioned down to her Casper High cheer uniform. "These are from _last_year. Can you believe they made us wear these again! And all because the science department needed to update their books. Ugh—no one looks at the old ones we've got anyway. Why would we care if they get new ones?"

Sam glared at the girl. "Wow...they say beauty isn't important, but it sure helps if your poor or air headed. Guess which one you are?"

"Why you—" Star strutted around the table.

Danny made a face and grabbed Sam's arm. "Um...Sam, let's not fight, okay?"

Sam ripped her arm out of Danny's grasp. "Yes, let's." At this, Danny stepped in front of her.

"Let's...go visit the cookie booth. I'm sure we can make a nice cookie in the shape of Star's face that you can devour...instead of literally destroying her face right now." Danny began pushing Sam across the gym toward the booth. Sam didn't protest anymore, but she kept a steady glare on Star the entire time. Tucker bid a farewell to his two friends and paid his dollar to step into the Mistletoe Maze.

Meanwhile, Sam and Danny were enjoying their cookies. Danny's cookie was a Christmas tree, and Sam's was a cut-out of Star's head. Danny smirked. "Feel better?"

"No. I'd rather shove it down her throat...all in the name of good Christmas cheer, of course." Danny laughed as he finished his cookie and threw away his napkin. He grabbed Sam's hand. "Come on, let's walk around."

As the two friends began walking, Danny asked, "Do you really think it's stupid for that booth to be set up?"

"Yeah, I mean it's probably just some ploy to get the Ghost Boy to kiss Paulina." Noticing the look Danny gave her, Sam asked, "What?"

"You know that girl too well."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Doesn't surprise me that I'm right. _You_ wouldn't go in there would you?"

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Me? No way. Especially not as Phantom. I would actually like to be _free_for Christmas, not Paulina's prisoner." Sam laughed.

"So true. Well I—" Sam cut off when she noticed a blue mist escape Danny's mouth. He sighed.

"Be back in a minute." He ducked under a table and changed, shooting up into the sky to try and find the ghost. As soon as he became tangible again, he found himself wrapped in pink energy. The energy coils shocked him and sent him plummeting onto the roof of the school. "Ah!"

As soon as he hit the roof, he looked around for the ghost responsible. His eyes narrowed when he saw a familiar guitar. "Hey, dipstick! I figured I should pick on you for awhile before the Christmas truce goes into affect." Ember floated into the air and prepared to strum her guitar again. "Because, you know, not being able to pick on you for an entire day is just criminal." She cackled and strummed a power chord on her guitar, knocking Danny toward the edge of the roof.

"Ahh!" Danny screamed as he rolled. As soon as he came to a stop on the edge, he got an idea. He smirked, and strained against his bonds, easily breaking them as he released all his energy in a green explosion. He phased through the roof and into the gym and invisibly picked up an armful of fake snow from ground. Hurriedly, he shot back through the roof before Ember could follow him. "Hey, Ember."

Ember turned at the sound of her name, an evil glint in her eye as she positioned her hand for another strum. "I realize there's _snow _way you'll forgive me for this, but—" Danny dumped the fake snow on Ember, which only proved to aggravate the spirit more. "—you should chill out." With those words, Danny threw his arms toward the washed up rock star and froze her solid with a look of surprise on her face. Danny sighed contently and dusted off his hands, which were still covered in glitter from the gym floor. He popped out a thermos and sucked the ghost up. "All in a day's work," he mumbled as he tossed the thermos in the air and caught it again.

Quickly, he phased back into the building and found a place to turn human again. As soon as rejoined the crowd, he began searching for Sam, but he couldn't find her. His searching led him by the Mistletoe Maze again, where he found Tucker. He was standing still, with a slight dazed look on his face. Danny waved a hand in front of his best friend's face. "Um...Tuck, you okay?"

"Huh? Oh, Danny, hey. Yep, never been better." Danny shook his head, amused at his friend.

"Well, have you seen Sam anywhere? I sorta left her to go fight a ghost and—"

"Dude, you gotta go in there." Tucker turned Danny toward the Mistletoe Maze and pointed happily. Danny raised an eyebrow.

"What?"

"Just trust me. It's for your own good." Tucker began pushing his half-ghost best friend toward the entrance of the maze. Danny tried to resist.

"I don't know, Tuck. Sam didn't seem to be to happy about—"

"Yeah, well you're not Sam. So go on, try it out." Tucker pushed Danny to a stop right in front of the table, where another cheerleader—this one, Danny didn't know—had taken over Star's shift. He smiled.

"I suppose it couldn't hurt." He dropped a dollar into the basket and entered the maze. He took a left, then a right, and before long, he found himself deep in the maze. "There's no way this thing can be _too_huge. I mean, we're still in the gym." He was then reminded of Sam's accusations that Paulina was an evil, mind-controlling spirit from a different dimension, and he had one errant thought that the entrance to this maze may have been a portal to that dimension. He shook off the strange feeling, writing it off as pure speculation.

He wasted no time walking through the maze. After all, there was no way to tell which way he needed to go anyway. Left and right he turned over and over again until he finally caught a glimpse of green a couple feet away. Smiling, he jogged toward it. Now, all he had to do was wait for—

"Danny?" Danny started at the sound of his name and looked left. Was that—

"Sam? What are you doing in here?"

She laughed once. "I think I could ask you the same question."

Danny raised an eyebrow and folded his arms, a slight smile on his lips. "I'm not the one who nearly attacked Star and publicly wrote this place off."

Sam shrugged and closed her eyes, an indignant look on her face. "So a girl can change her mind." Sam glanced up at Danny.

"You changed your mind?" Danny asked, skeptically. Sam snorted.

"No way."

"So you're in here because...?" Danny trailed off, searching for an answer.

Sam laughed. "Does it matter? I don't think so. Besides, look what we're standing under." Danny looked up, having forgotten exactly why he was here, and blushed. "The laws of the mistletoe must be followed." Sam smiled slightly and took a step toward Danny.

Danny took a step back. "I didn't think you celebrated this time of year?"

Sam shrugged once again. "Eh...I don't, but this is fun, don't you think? Of course, if you ever tell anyone that I'm bowing to the rules of a stupid piece of green shrubbery, you know I'll kill you. Or do you just not wanna kiss me?" At this, Danny smiled, and stepped back toward Sam.

"Okay, I never said that." Danny and Sam both took one last step toward each other before Danny gently touched Sam's back and pulled her toward him. He smiled, then slowly brought his lips down to faintly touch hers, and closed his eyes. The kiss lasted maybe fifteen seconds. Danny pulled back, the smile still brightening his face and his eyes sparkling like a wildfire. Sam's face mirrored Danny's. She stepped back, but took hold of his hand.

"We never speak of this to anyone, agreed?"

"Agreed." Danny nodded. He sighed and cocked his head to one side. "So...time to find a way out?"

"Hmm...that. Or..." Sam trailed off, looking deep into Danny's eyes, and stepping closer once more. For some reason, Danny thought he was going to like where this was going. "Or, we can avoid the silly cheerleaders and try and find the other two mistletoe."

Danny's eyes brightened and a smile lit his face. "I like your idea better."

The two giggled softly, then set out on their mission.

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><p><strong>AN: **You know one of the great things about writing fanfics for a "punny" cartoon? Writing ridiculous puns. Snow what I mean? :)

Anyway, while writing this, I discovered a ton of my weaknesses. So I've decided to try and remember them as I write new stuff (which I hopefully will) and work on them. See! Progress! :)

So...I liked this, but did you? Thanks for reading!

**Merry Christmas to you all! And a Happy New Year!**


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